Notes

Some advice from PZ Myers:

I want my commenters to be uncivil. There is no virtue in politeness when confronted with ignorance, dishonesty, and delusion. I want them to charge in to the heart of the issue and shred the frauds, without hesitation and without faltering over manners. These demands for a false front of civility are one of the strategies used by charlatans who want to mask their lack of substance — oh, yes, it would be so goddamned rude to point out that a huckster is lying to you. I am quite happy that we have a culture of being rude to frauds [on Pharyngula].

I completely agree with the underlying sentiment, which appears in the sentences that I put into boldface above. The hard part is recognizing when you are truly facing “ignorance, dishonesty, and delusion” from “charlatans.” Unfortunately, you can’t just ask someone, “Are you an ignorant, dishonest, and delusional charlatan? Are you trying to mask your lack of substance?” Well, you can, but then you can’t expect an accurate response. It takes some experience discussing a particular topic with a variety of people before you’ll have a passable success rate at determining on your own whether a conversational foe meets those criteria.

So while there may be no virtue in suffering fools, there’s probably some virtue in honing your fool-detection skills before you take Myers’ advice to heart.